Making Historical Archaeology Visible: Community Outreach and Education

This post is crossposted from The Society for Historical Archaeology Blog, Current Topics Section. Click here to see that post...

If there’s one thing that the controversies surrounding the Diggers and American Digger reality shows have taught us, it’s that the general American public still does not know how to tell the difference between historical archaeologists, and the treasure hunters who are currently on their TV screens.  Furthermore, this lack of public knowledge helps to make our protests sound like the “ivory tower elite” complaining because we are the only people who should be allowed to use the very resource of which we also claim to be guardians.  We talk a lot in archaeology, anthropology—and even academia in general— about being more “public” or becoming “public intellectuals,” the reality, however, is that we are still not doing enough.

Back in September, The Chronicle of Higher Education‘s ProfHaker blog posted an open question to its readers—“How do you make your work visible?”  The post was about the fact that we need to be able to engage people outside the academic world.  We should, at least, be able to explain 1) what we do and 2) why it is important.  According to the post, academia has a “self-induced opacity that makes it difficult for anyone outside colleges and universities to understand—or even care—what it is scholars and teachers do.”  I think this is further underscored for anthropology (a discipline of which very few Americans have general knowledge).  In fact, about the same time last fall, the American Anthropologist reprinted Jeremy Sabloff’s excellent 2010 AAA distinguished lecture “Where have you gone, Margret Mead? Anthropology and Public Intellectual” in which Dr. Sabloff states:

“Anthropologists have important, practical knowledge, but the mainstream, public and policy maker alike, generally does not understand or appreciate our insights. But we all are in a position to change this situation. I will try to tell you why and how in the pages that follow. The title of my article—with apologies to Paul Simon—is “Where Have You Gone, Margaret Mead?,” but perhaps in a more direct manner it could have been “We Urgently Need Anthropological Public Intellectuals.”

However, Sabloff seems to making a call for some sort of “anthropological superstar” to appear; someone who will be a pundit on all the chat shows and spar with Anderson Cooper about public policy.  It feels to me like waiting for such a charismatic superstar anthropologist (or historical archaeologist for that matter) to take the stage and capture America’s hearts and minds allows us to shirk our duty to become public intellectuals.  This doge is especially convenient for young scholars as the academy still does not value public outreach.  As Matt Thompson has pointed out in his “We Don’t Need Another Hero” blog post for Savage Minds: “You can’t make a career publishing in journals of history, American studies, or education. If you want to be an anthropologist you are expected to publish in anthropology journals. Interdisciplinarity [and public outreach] be damned.” Thompson goes on to say…

“What I’m trying to say is don’t sit around waiting for the next Margaret Mead…Find something where you are, some way to play a role however small and do it. It doesn’t have to be hard. You don’t have to write a grant. Just share what you know and what you do with the people around you.”

I am lucky in this regard.  My job as Research Station Archeologist with the Arkansas Archeological Survey has a sort of “built in” public outreach component—one that dovetails nicely with my own personality and desire to interact with (and educate) the outside world (yeah, I’m an egoist that way…In fact, “public intellectual” may be a fancy buzz word for someone who, for whatever deep psychological reason, feels he/she must perform in public).

Jamie Brandon gives a talk about the Arkansas Archeological Society's Summer Training Program in El Dorado, AR in 2011.

In addition to teaching, research and volunteer excavations, I have given over 100 public talks over the last 5 years (averaging a bit more than one a month).  Over the past two years, I have been a part of two documentaries produced by AETN (Arkansas Educational Television)—one about cemetery preservation in the state  (Silent Storytellers, released March 11, 2010) and one about why we should commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Civil War in Arkansas (Arkansas CW150, released April 29, 2011).  Interestingly, although these are important outreach efforts (and efforts that are considered a part of my job), I personally feel that my use of digital and social media (listservs, blogs, Facebook and Twitter) have been a more important outreach tool for me.  I get as much feedback from my on-line presence as I do the documentary TV shows, and this underscores Thompson’s point above—“Just share what you know and what you do with the people around you.”

I understand that I am blessed with a job that values public outreach, but there are many, many, many great examples of individuals in the academy, government agencies and the private sector that mange to make public outreach their business despite the heavy demands from research, teaching, setting public policy or trying to make a profit.  I am grateful to these folks—from Judy Bense (President of the University of West Florida ) who hosts a very popular one-minute daily radio program “Unearthing Pensacola” on the local National Public Radio affiliate (WUWF 88.1 FM), to my friend Greg Vogel who (although an Assistant Professor at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville with a heavy teaching load) regularly writes newspaper columns and does a monthly interview on a morning news/talk show on WJBM 1480 AM, Jerseyville, Illinois, to our current SHA president Paul Mullins giving talks at places like Brownsburg High School in Brownsburg, Indiana.  This last event I only know about because Mullins posted it on Facebook last week.  If I may underscore my point above about social media, through the very simple and quick act of posting a phone picture, Mullins told almost 400 people who follow him on Facebook and Twitter about “what he does.”

On the larger scale, we need to change how we view public outreach in our discipline.  In 2009 when PBS aired Time Team America, some of my colleagues (and you know who you are) expressed condescending opinions about the show and what they thought of as “prostituting” science for public consumption.  I would urge them to rethink these views.  Time Team may not be Sabloff’s “anthropological superstar,” but wouldn’t you rather have a show that taught the general public what we do, how we do it and why it is important in place of the current crop of reality shows?

We should all participate on some level in the public arena…and we need to change the structural disciplinary biases against public outreach.  If we do not, others will fill that vacuum in American popular culture—others like Diggers and American Digger.

If we are unhappy with these shows (including Time Team America?), we need to ask ourselves “What should the public image of historical archaeology look like?” and “How do we get there?”  I believe the answer is not in a single pop culture icon (i.e., Mead) or show (i.e., Time Team), but in all of us doing small, daily acts of outreach.  So we all need to ask ourselves on a regular basis, “What have I done lately to tell people what I do, and why it is important?”…What are you doing to make historical archaeology visible?

References Cited

Sabloff, Jeremy A. (2011) “Where Have You Gone, Margaret Mead? Anthropology and Public Intellectuals,” AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Vol. 113, No. 3, pp. 408–416.

Shovels: Regional Diversity in One of Our Most Indispensible Tools

“…the shovel is the trademark of archeology and perhaps its most indispensible tool.”– Heizer A Guide to Archaeological Methods (1949:32)

“Lucille, God gave me a gift. I shovel well. I shovel very well.”– The Shoveller, Mystery Men (1999)

When I was given the brief to write about archeological tools for ThenDig, my mind reeled.  Like Ms. Morgan, whose post about boots inspired this issue, I have been a collector of regional tools and methods for as long as I have been a field archeologist (going on 25 years now).

Everyone has trowel stories (including stories of lost trowels recovered like the Silas Hurry post about archeological tools recovered in St. Mary’s City).  I, however, have always been interested in the “coarser grained” archeology tools—shovels and their kin. One of my earliest mentors in the field of archeology kept his flat shovel razor sharp and could use it to make floors with a skill and cleanness that most of us only muster with a good trowel.  In his hands, the shovel was just as good as a trowel.  I will never be that good…but it did spark my interest and respect for the shovel.

At first blush this may seem like an innocuous topic.  How different can shovels be?  I do not claim a wide geographic experience—I have worked mostly in the southeastern US—but in the 13 different states I have worked, I have encountered a wide variety of shovel tools and techniques.  Each of these is an adaptation to the local conditions, or products of the genealogy of intellectual traditions.

Standard No. 2 excavating shovels recommended By Heizer (1949).

My old (1949) edition of Heizer’s A Guide to Archaeological Methods states that a “long-handled, round-point standard No. 2 excavating shovels are recommended. Spades, scoops, and square-point shovels are virtually useless owing to their inability to penetrate any but the softest dirt.” These shovels were clearly important and as recently as 2006 archeologists were combing the country (or at least advertising in some newspapers) for these shovels… The Nebraska State Historical Society was willing to pay up to $50 for True Temper No. 2 light-weight shovels in good condition.

Over the years, apparently, the archeological stance on flat shovels has softened a bit.  The seventh edition of Field Methods in Archeology still uses Heizer’s introduction (and preference for snub-nosed round shovels), but it also reports that “square-point shovels are useful in excavating sandy deposits and many archeologists find them valuable for cleaning excavation unit floors in the search for post molds, rodent burrows, and other features” (Hester et al. 1997:70).

Despite Heizer’s recommendation, my personal motto for archeology and the use of shovels is simple—“round shovels for round holes, square shovels for square holes.”  By this I mean that I prefer to use a sharpened spade to dig the small (30 to 40 cm in diameter), round shovel test holes that southeastern archeologists use to locate sites on survey, and a VERY sharp broad, flat shovel to dig 1×1 or 2×2 meter test units that are common in testing and full excavation projects.  This maxim of mine has been fed by my original training in the Mid-South where we commonly dug in nice soft loams and loess soils.  Things changed for me as I began to work in other settings.

In the Mississippi Valley the fine clays can be very difficult to deal with—when they are dry they are bricks and when they are wet they are a sticky mess.  Two different shovel styles (springing from intellectual traditions) have evolved to deal with these soils (why do I suddenly sound like an environmental determinist?). First, there is the spade that has a “half-moon” cut out of the blade—these are the self-manufactured versions of Heizer’s shovels trimming the point off and filing the edge with a bench grinder.  To the best of my limited knowledge this style comes out of the American Bottom region (or at least remains in style in that area).  The “half-moon” cut out allows for a lot of strength in cutting through clay (and even burned daub walls).  They do tend to make little ridges in the units floors, but if you were trained in this tradition you have probably become adept at minimizing this effect.

The sharpened "rice shovel": weapon of choice for the Mississippi Delta.

The second adaptive strategy in the Mississippi Valley is the use of a sharpened “rice shovel.”  For those of you who have not encountered them, a rice shovel is a hybrid spade—with a snub nose and three holes in the blade.  The shovel is somewhat flatter than a typical spade (more like a flat shovel) and the snub nose eliminates the pointy bit the way the cutting the “half moon” out of a pointed spade does.  “Why the holes?”, you ask.  The wet, sticky clays of the Mississippi River valley can often stick to your shovel blade with such suction that it can be very difficult to dislodge your soil matrix once you have shoveled it up.  The holes break this suction insuring that you will be able to toss your soil into a bucket or screen.

But in the mid 1990s I left the lowlands and worked for a decade in the Ozark Mountains.  This, again, radically changed my thinking about excavation.  In the lowlands of the southeast I had been trained to keep floors and walls level and pretty…and my trowels and shovels sharp enough to cut string.  In the rocky, uplands of the Ozarks all of this was nigh impossible.  Most of the sites I worked on were 50%-70% gravel and as such it became very difficult (and pointless) to keep and edge on a trowel as you were literally mining the rocks out of a roughly 10 cm level in every unit.  This environment made my favorite weapon, a sharp, large, flat-bladed shovel useless.  I had three adaptive strategies for the Ozarks.

1945 Ames Entrenching Tool

1)      Entrenching Tool (or E-Tool):  I am told that entrenching tools go back to at least the Roman period, but the ones I use have their roots in the folding spades of World War I and II—In fact, I literally prefer WWII entrenching tools—I have owned three different 1945 shovels manufactured by Ames for the US Army (this has lead more than one student to declare that my shovel “belongs in a museum”).  I like to fold the shovel blade 90 degrees and use the shovel like an excavation hoe (or a large trowel).  It works really well in the gravelly soils of the Ozarks, but I actually picked this tool usage up from a colleague of mine who worked in Texas and the southwestern US…so I am not sure of the origin of its archeological use…but it is not indigenous to the Ozarks.

2)      Geologic hammer:  This tool was actually great in the Ozarks for cleaning the rocks out of the corners of your excavation units and for better defining the wall/floor transition.  Just like you would run your trowel along the base of the wall to create a right angle transition, you could use the pick end of the geological hammer to carve away the rocks to approximate a right angle…sigh.

3)      Small-scale gardening spade AKA “The Lady Shovel”:  Back to my maxim…using standard-size round spades to dig shovel tests was also difficult in the Ozarks as you were pounding through gravel.  I found that a small-scale gardening spade was the best for digging shovel tests as it allowed you to “go around” rocks in the process of carving out the round hole.  Unfortunately, many people (and some industry marketing) has given this tool the blatantly sexist moniker “the lady shovel” due to its frequent use in gardening (which apparently has become a gendered hobby).  A word of caution, however, you cannot use the cheap, welded gardening spades you might find in discount stores for shovel testing in the Ozarks…you have to have a “real” thick gauged steel shovel…just scaled down from the standard pointed spade.  The Ozark rocks would tear up one of the flimsy variety within a single shovel test.

In 2006 I once again fund myself changing geographical regions as I took up my new post in the rolling gulf coastal plains of southwest Arkansas—it’s called the Trans-Mississippi South by some researchers.  I’m now working in the beautiful sandy soils at Historic Washington State Park near Hope, Arkansas.  It’s beautiful—the ease of digging and screening sand, with just enough structure to hold it together and not collapse the way coastal sand does. There is dust on my entrenching tool these days…I’m back where I started with a sharp, flat, broad bladed shovel.

**cross posted from ThenDig July 28. 2011 ***

The Mysterious Case of the “Social Core” in Texas Anthropology

When I was a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin I, like most other anthropologists interested in the “humanistic” side of anthropology, took what they called “Social Core.” This class, formally entitled “Introduction to Graduate Social Anthropology (ANT 392),” was largely seen as a “trial by fire” which served to separate out those who could handle the challenging anthropology curriculum at UT from those who could not. It was a formidable class.

I took this class in 1999 and at the time I was puzzled by the terminology—why “Social Anthropology?” Every other reference to the sub-discipline of anthropology that deals with living cultures used the term “cultural anthropology” (e.g., the freshman-level course was “ANT 302 Cultural Anthropology”). Although the majority of English-speaking countries use the term “cultural anthropology,” scholars in the UK (and some other European scholars influenced by British anthropology) prefer the term “social anthropology” (or even more convolutedly “socio-cultural anthropology”). But how do we explain this British/European reference in the middle of Texas?

I am always interested institutional history, so I was curious…I asked every senior University of Texas professor I could when presented with opportunity, but none had an answer (and few had noticed the disparity). I had always meant to follow up on this by looking trough old UT course catalogs until I came to the origin of the “Social Core.”….but, alas…the rigors of graduate school (& trying to complete my dissertation) kept me from ever following these instincts.

So it is strange that today a simple request at my current job in Arkansas might have lead me to the answer to this almost-forgotten question.

A colleague of mine at the Arkansas Archeological Survey was writing an entry for the Encyclopedia of Arkansas on Sam Dickinson—an avid avocational archeologist in southwest Arkansas in the 1930s (Check out my obituary blog post for him here). She was trying to figure out the name of an anthropologist Dickinson met at UT probably in 1937 or 1938. This man is mentioned in a 2005 oral history interview of Dickinson conducted by SAU Historian James Willis. This anthropologist was supposedly born in France, had a degree from the University of Toulouse, was on the faculty of the University of Mexico and University of Mississippi before going to Texas. She had had no luck tracking this mysterious anthropologist down, so (knowing my interest in Dickenson, my connections to Texas, and my love of institutional history) she asked if I knew anything about this guy….I did not.

I started with Texas archeologists that I knew that Dickenson had interacted with—Like A. T. Jackson.

A. T. (Alvin Thomas) Jackson—the archeologist in charge under J. E. Pearce during the 1920s to 1930s and then under Dr. J. Gilbert McAllister, Director of Research, during the late 1930s for the WPA and University of Texas at Austin. He continued to work in Texas archeology with the university in the 1940s. Jackson is well known for developing field methods and excavation techniques that were new and innovative for the times and allowed for better recovery and documentation of archeological field work. I knew that Dickinson & Jackson corresponded quite a bit….but Jackson has NO connection to France or Mexico (that I am aware of)…so I then thought it might be his predecessors, Pearce or McAllister…Pearce had studied anthropology and archeology at the University of Chicago and the École d’Anthropologie of Paris (not Toulouse…but in the ball park)….but then I hit pay dirt.

I came across this reference in a memorial to McAllister:

 ”…Also on the Anthropology staff was George C. Engerrand, a colorful French anthropologist of the old school, a polymath who expected his students to be as intimately versed as he in the manners and customs of the peoples of the world. McAllister was much influenced by Engerrand and even more so by Pearce who, by virtue of a marvelously warm and sincere personality and an evangelical belief in the worth of anthropology, turned the young student into an anthropologist. In McAllister’s words, “Pearce was a phenomenal individual.”"–

Which led me to this on-line encyclopedia reference...I knew I found the guy…

ENGERRAND, GEORGE CHARLES MARIUS (1877–1961). George Charles Engerrand, professor of anthropology at the University of Texas, was born on August 11, 1877, near Bordeaux, France, of French-Basque ancestry. He received his early education from private tutors, and at the age of eighteen he enrolled at the University of Bordeaux, where he received a licentiate in geology (1897) and a licentiate in botany (1898). At Bordeaux he was a student of the famed pioneer sociologist Émile Durkheim. In 1898 he went to Brussels, Belgium, where he had been invited to teach by the geographer Élisée Reclus. Between 1898 and 1907 Engerrand held numerous research and teaching positions, some of them concurrently, at several Belgian institutions.

From 1907 until the political revolution in 1917 made it impossible to continue, Engerrand lived in Mexico and was, for most of this period, professor of archeology in the Museo Nacional de Arqueología, Historia, y Etnología. He moved to Mississippi, where he taught geology until 1920, then to Austin, Texas, where he became adjunct professor of anthropology at the University of Texas. For the next forty-one years, until his retirement in 1961, Engerrand was a member of the UT anthropology department, from which he received a Ph.D. in 1935.

He wrote seventy-five articles and several books. He received many academic honors, including La Croix de Chevalier de l’Ordre des Palmes, a French decoration given for distinguished teaching and scholarly publication. In 1898 Engerrand married Alice Delsaute, from whom he separated in 1902; two sons were born of this marriage. In 1904 he married Jeanne Richard, and they had one son and two daughters. Engerrand died in Mexico City on September 2, 1961, and was buried in Austin.

AND this guy looks like a good candidate to explain the presence of the “social anthropology” terminology at the University of Texas…He was a direct student of Émile Durkheim… French sociologists like Durkhiem and Marcel Mauss were hugely influential to British “social” anthropology in the 1920s and 1930s—an important period in the expansion of the disciple and (incidentally) the training of Dr. Engerrand). Engerrand would have been exposed to British anthropology though his associations with Durkheim and, thus, may be the source of the mysterious terminology still evident in the University of Texas anthropology curriculum…There may, of course, be another source…but until another random happenstance steers me to another answer…I’m sticking to this one.

Howard Anthropology Under Fire

This month I have received a couple alarming e-mails from my colleagues at Howard University. It appears that Howard University President Sidney A. Ribeau has recently revealed his plans to close the anthropology program in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology–along with other programs such as the B.A. in African Studies, Classics, and Philosophy. This reduction in liberal arts programs is a disturbing trend not only among Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU), but also among smaller colleges and universities across the United States (Southern Arkansas University, where I currently teach, is considering scrapping its sociology major in the near future)…but, beyond the broad trend (which is something I may address in a later post), this specific case is a tragedy in a very particular sense.

 

Founders Library at Howard University

 

Howard University is the only one out of 105 HBCUs in the United States with a five-field approach to anthropology (the “fifth field” in this case is applied anthropology).  Moreover, the program has a strong emphasis in bioarchaeology and archeology.  The Howard Anthropology program came to national attention in the 1990s when they became an integral part of the African Burial Ground (ABG) project in New York City.    The importance of the ABG project lies not only in its archaeology and bioarcheology, but also in its politics.  It was an important moment for our discipline when an empowered descendant community wrested control of the project away from a firm that they saw as insensitive to its wishes and interests…they placed control of the removal, analysis and re-interment of 400 venerated ancestors in the hands of Dr. Michael Blakey and Howard University–a HBCU that has a reputation of good scholarship and black activism.  If such an event happened next year, will there be an anthropology program capable to taking on such a research project?

My colleagues pointed out in their email that the President’s decision will adversely impact the archaeology of Africa and the African Diaspora for a number of reasons. First, it will frustrate our efforts to recruit and train African Americans, students of African descent, and other minorities.  They call attention to the fact that, currently, the total number of registered minority members in the American Anthropological Association is less than 16%, and the number of African Americans is approximately 3%.  I will point out that several Howard University alumni (including Blakey who was the bioarcheologist for the ABG Project when he was a professor at Howard, but got his BA at HU in 1978 before going to UMass Amherst for his MA & Ph.D. ) have gone on to important careers in our discipline and made important contributions to anthropology.  I have believed for a long time that one of the avenues to increasing the number of practicing African-American archeologists is to get strong anthropology programs in HBCUs.  Losing Howard University’s anthropology program will be a definite blow to that endeavor.

The e-mail states that closing the program will…

…hinder our abilities to expose students of all majors to the past of Africa and the African Diaspora.”  Approximately 10,500 students are enrolled at Howard, and many of them are African Americans from all corners of the United States, Africa and other countries throughout the African Diaspora.  A closing will not only affect our students, but it will also impact local communities, descendant groups, indigenous peoples, underserved populations, and affiliated institutions.  Each of us in the Howard U. Anthropology Program works in collaboration with community interest groups.

 

Poster from the Windows from the Past Conference

 

Last February, I had the honor of being a part of Windows from the Present to the Past: the Archaeology of Africa and the African Diaspora–a conference at Howard University hosted by the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Office of the Provost, and Office of the Dean.  I was very impressed with the mix of scholars, students and faculty members that the conference brought together.  I had a great time, but my colleagues tell me it was much more of a success than that…they say that the conference served as a means for students and faculty members in other disciplines and Howard University departments to learn about our research. Since the conference, they tell me, the sizes of Howard’s archaeology classes have doubled in enrollment.

After a period of discussion, President Sidney A. Ribeau will make his final decisions shortly after December 1, 2010. Therefore, soon there will be a “Call for Action” and you will be asked to send letters to the President, other colleagues, influential community members, and prominent political leaders.

Send comments to either:

Eleanor King; emking@howard.edu OR

Florie Bugarin; florie_bugarin@yahoo.com

The History of the SAU Research Station, Part 2

Photographs from 1968
Click on images for a closer look…

Old Main Building at Southern State College (now Southern Arkansas University) in 1968. This picture appears to have been taken before Dr. Schambach arrived…perhaps it was taken during a trip to negotiate the establishment of the Arkansas Archeological Survey (AAS) Station (see my previous post). Note the “A&M” on the building’s facade.

Drs. Ken Cole (left) and Frank Schambach (center) listen to Charles McGimsey at orientation for new AAS archeologists–July, 1968, Fayetteville, Arkansas.

Frank Schambach checking office supply order at the Coordinating office of the AAS–July, 1968, Fayetteville, Arkansas.

 

Cultural Anthropology and Rituals of Exchange

I’ve just read on Savage Minds about the rebirth of the University of Chicago’s anthropology journal Exchange. Exchange is a student-run journal not unlike Text, Practice, Performance from the Américo Paredes Center for Cultural Studies at the University of Texas at Austin (For those of you who are not critical readers, that’s a shameless plug for the TPP journal as I was fortunate enough to serve on its editorial board while I was at Texas).

At any rate, I understand that repeated reincarnation has been the hallmark of the Exchange‘s fifty-odd year history (it even ran briefly in the 1960s under the title Anthropology Tomorrow…gotta love that)…Let’s hope this on-line version sticks.

In this new issue of Exchange:

The Semiotics of ‘Straight Thuggin By Laurence Ralph

The Right to Beauty Cosmetic Citizenship and Medical Modernity in Brazil By Alvaro Jarrin

Notes from the Field Excerpts from Post-Katrina Louisiana By Shannon Dawdy

Of particular interest may be an interview with Marshall Sahlins (picture above) entitled “In the Absence of the Metaphysical Field.”

The History of the SAU Research Station, Part 1

This snippet is from The History of the Arkansas Archeological Survey by Charles R. McGimsey III and Hester A. Davis (1992), page 44… It chronicles the founding of the Arkansas Archeological Survey’s research station at Southern Arkansas University…at least according to Hester Davis.

1968

Meanwhile, Bob was recruiting four other archaeologists and negotiating the contracts and space on the four additional campuses (Arkansas A&M, now the University of Arkansas at Monticello; Southern State College, now Southern Arkansas University; Arkansas State Teachers College, now the University of Central Arkansas, and Arkansas Polytechnic College, now the Arkansas Tech University…Frank Schambach had been in Arkansas in 1966 for a short time because his dissertation was on material excavated by the WPA and Phil Phillips in the central Ouachita River Valley. Correspondence had been initiated with him, and when he came to the Caddo Conference in Arkadelphia in April, he was taken to Magnolia for his final interview with the college officials and accepted the Station Archeologist’s position there. So, by the spring of 1968, there was a commitment for cooperative agreements with all of the state-supported institutions of higher education, just as had been envisioned in the enabling legislation.

Arkansas Archeological Survey Archeologists on steps of Vol Walker Hall, U of A campus, April 13, 1969. Frank Schambach (far left), Hester Davis, Burney McClurkan, Jim Scholtz, Martha Rolingson, Bob McGimsey, Ken Cole, Dan Morse, and John Huner.

Four Score & Seven Years Ago…

Kudos to Mike Wesch on his stint as a guest blogger on Savage Minds. Particularly entertaining (and right on target) was his last post–criticisms of PowerPoint class lectures (i.e., it locks you into a linear “slide-show” format, it mandates hierarchical bullet points, it promotes “top down” lectures where the professor provides the “key” points, it encourages the use of ridiculous icons that distract the audience–like bouncing angel smiley-faces–and so on).

Mike calls our attention to Peter Norvig’s great PowerPoint version of the Gettysburg Address which well illustrates the problem–”rather than learning to write a report using sentences, students are being taught how to formulate client pitches and infomercials.” YOU HAVE TO CHECK THIS PPT OUT!

I like his suggestion of creating self-contained interactive websites for each class topic & I plan on implementing it ASAP. Finally, I am also interested in Mike’s “anti-teacher” philosophy, but I haven’t quite figured out how I can fully implement it in the classroom yet.

I was surprised, however, by the number of Savage Mind readers & bloggers that did not see the same problems with PowerPoint technology (see the comments section).

Tags: powerpoint, teaching, technology

Four-Field Anthropology & the Superdisciplinary Approach

Nancy over at Savage Minds has followed up on an earlier post regarding her frustration with the four-field approach to “Introduction to Anthropology” courses (see my post on “Must I Side With or Against My Section?” for a bit about tensions between our subdisciplines).

At any rate, Nancy has found a way to make the course work and it hits along the same lines as my own approach to integrating subdisciplines in anthropology courses…Nancy is integrating the four fields at every step. Instead of spending chunks of the course focusing on one field at a time, she goes through the course focusing on topics. In each topic she examines the contributions of the various subfields.

This is not unlike the way I have described my work which integrates elements of historical archaeology, prehistoric archaeology, cultural anthropology, bioarchaeology and cultural studies to colleagues when they ask about my teaching style. I’d like to develop topical courses on race, gender, households, landscapes, or whatever… and examine sources that cross-cut the traditional “pidgin holes” of our discipline. When taught in this way students will be able to see the interconnections (and disjunctures) between different subdisciplines (and even sub-subdisciplines) of our field.

This, of course, is not an original idea….I’ll credit my version to some of the writings of Critical Theorists (Horkhiemer, Adorno, etc.) who took as a part of their project to build a superdisciplinary understanding of culture…

“Superdisciplinary” is not merely “interdisciplinary”…”interdisciplinary” implies that groups of individuals from various disciplines work together collectively to develop theories… “Superdisciplinary” work, on the other hand, does its best to traverse and undermine the traditional boundaries between disciplines (and, instead, stresses the interconnections between philosophy, economics, politics, biology, etc.)…

That’s my credo & I’m sticking to it….

Archaeology of the African Diaspora, Part 2

Here’s a question that I’ve wanted to ask since the last couple of conferences.

Several papers in the “Personal is Political: Archaeological Studies of and in Activist Contexts” session at the last Society for Historical Archaeology meeting asserted that archaeologists working on the African Diaspora needed more (some) training in African and/or African-American studies. I heard similar calls in papers at the last American Anthropological Assocation meetings in the “Can Archaeologists Be Activists?” and “Dialogues in Context: Perspectives on Applied Work in African Diaspora Archaeology” sessions.

So my question(s) is/are: What training do folks who are working out there have now? What would you recommend to students coming into African Diaspora archaeology? Are there programs out there which already cross-train students well?

If you are not an archaeologist but work in the African Diaspora, what training would you expect an archaeologist to have…or better, what training do you WISH archaeologists would get?

On a side note: To me this sounds a lot like the issue of historical archaeologists getting training in historical methods (which gets rehashed every so often on HISTARCH).
If we still haven’t resolved that one, is there hope for tackling this one?

Send me some feedback or leave a comment….